Wikimedia Commons · Public domain
The Seated Scribe is one of the most lifelike objects to survive from ancient Egypt. He sits cross-legged on the ground with a papyrus roll unrolled across his lap, a reed pen in his right hand and a palette beside him, ready to write. His body is soft and slightly paunchy, his shoulders are rounded, and his eyes - made of rock crystal set in copper rims - follow the viewer around the room.
The statue is made of painted limestone, not the hard stone used for royal sculpture, and it was found in 1850 by Auguste Mariette at Saqqara, near the tomb of a high official. The scribe’s identity is unknown: the inscription that would have named him is lost. He was probably a senior administrator of the late Fourth or early Fifth Dynasty, and the statue was placed in his tomb so that he could continue to serve in the afterlife.
What makes the figure remarkable is its refusal of idealisation. Egyptian sculpture normally presents the body as a permanent, timeless form; the scribe is shown with a belly, a double chin and a slightly weary expression. He is one of the earliest portraits in world art in which a specific individual seems to be looking back at us.
The sculptor is unknown. Egyptian artists were usually anonymous craftsmen working in teams attached to the royal court or to temples, and their names were rarely recorded. The Seated Scribe was produced in the Memphite workshops of the Old Kingdom, at the height of the pyramid-building age.
Scribes were the administrators of the Egyptian state: they recorded taxes, land, grain and labour, and literacy was the key to advancement. Statues like this one were placed in tombs as a resting place for the spirit. Mariette’s excavation at Saqqara in 1850-51 was one of the founding moments of Egyptian archaeology and supplied the Louvre with the core of its Egyptian collection.
Sully Wing · Level 1 · Egyptian Antiquities, Room 635
The Louvre is divided into three wings — Denon, Sully and Richelieu — reached from the hall beneath the glass pyramid.
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